sony pictures

Top Hollywood executives including James Murdoch have been recruited to help the United States counter Islamic extremist propaganda, according to hacked Sony Pictures emails published by WikiLeaks. Secret exchanges between the US State Department and Sony have also included a bizarre plan to recruit hip-hop artists to produce a Muslim We Are the World video to support the fight against Islamic State (IS).  

Andrew Lack has a Herculean task ahead of him. Lack was sworn in January 20 as Chief Executive Officer and Director of the U.S. International Broadcasting(USIB) services. His job will be to sort out the mess that has resulted from years of bad management and misplaced priorities at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the part-time board that for two decades has attempted to run the U.S. government’s complex of media services

This holiday season has stood out a bit from others, being the first time, at least as far as I can recall, that cyber warfare and the fictional assassination of North Korea's Supreme Leader have featured so very prominently in news and personal discussions. The Sony Pictures release of The Interview [...] has actually generated some interesting ideas about cybersecurity, information warfare, and a host of other issues.

Most North Koreans (except those who defected) with whom this correspondent had conversed in Pyongyang and elsewhere appeared to sincerely believe what they read in their country’s media: The United States and its allies are looking for any opportunity to undermine their country’s socialistic system and thwart its attempts to advance, militarily and materialistically.

After multiple theater chains announced that they would not screen “The Interview” on its Dec. 25 release date, Sony abandoned the movie. This kicked off a number of industry-wide reverberations, some yet-to-be-seen. So let’s get down to the business of digesting the multi-headed hydra that is Sony’s” Interview” catastrophe.